Speaker：Kiri Paramore
Professor of Asian Studies, University College Cork, National University of Ireland
Director, Irish Institute of Chinese Studies
Director, Irish Institute of Japanese Studies

 

Abstract:
The first sustained use of the concept of early modernity by academic historians
anywhere in the world occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century in Japan.
Early modernity was conceived partly in reaction to how the contemporaneous
academic periodization of Ancient-Medieval-Modern was used to justify imperialism.
Early modernity introduced a new, alternative trajectory towards nationhood and
sovereignty, one not dependent on a stage of feudal militarism, but instead located in
civil culture and linked to the spread of Neo-Confucianism. It expanded the possibilities
of modernity into more culturally and historically pluralist terrains, offering a vision of
modernity not necessarily bound to modern imperialism. This in turn created space for
critical reflections on the nature of global modernity, reflections that continue to be seen
in early modern history writing today.